For example, a parent might mention the letters on the license plate of a toy car while playing with the child. Robins and colleagues found that such talk occurs with children as young as 1 to 2 years of age. parents talk with their children about literacy-related matters by using data from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), a computerized repository containing transcripts of communication in spoken language ( MacWhinney, 2000). In an attempt to overcome these limitations, one line of research ( Robins, Ghosh, Rosales, & Treiman, 2014 Robins & Treiman, 2009 Robins, Treiman, & Rosales, 2014 Robins, Treiman, Rosales, & Otake, 2012) has examined how U.S. Earlier parental input may be important too, but only a few studies have examined literacy-related activities in the homes of toddlers (e.g., Burgess et al., 2002 Neumann, Hood, & Neumann, 2009). Another concern is that most studies have examined the later preschool years, when children are around 4 and 5 years old. In addition, the detail of the data that can be elicited through questionnaires is limited. However, parents may inflate their reports of how often they perform socially valued activities in order to present themselves as good parents. Many studies have asked parents whether and how often they engage in various activities. Thus, when looking at how experiences at home set the stage for early reading and decoding, parent talk about letters is a critical aspect to examine.Īlthough the studies just cited suggest that parents’ talk and teaching about letters is related to children's decoding skills, these studies have some limitations. The frequency of shared book reading appears to be more closely linked to vocabulary and listening comprehension than to decoding ( Sénéchal & Lefevre, 2002). Among the many activities that are included in questionnaire studies of literacy-related activities in homes, those that seem to be most closely related to children's later decoding skill include parents’ engagement with children in activities involving letters of the alphabet and reading and writing words ( Evans, Shaw, & Bell, 2000 Hood, Conlon, & Andrews, 2008 Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002 Skibbe, Bindman, Hindman, Aram, & Morrison, 2013 Sylva et al., 2011). Decoding, in turn, rests on letter knowledge and phonological skills ( Lonigan, Burgess, & Anthony, 2000). One important skill that must be mastered during the first few years of formal schooling is the ability to sound out individual words from text, that is, to decode. When considering how children's early experiences at home set the stage for reading, it is important to ask what young readers need to learn. Here we focus on one potentially important but understudied activity-parents’ talk about letters of the alphabet with their young children-and how this varies across families and relates to children's later reading performance. Shared book reading is the most studied aspect of the home literacy environment, but researchers have suggested that the construct of home literacy be expanded to include other activities (e.g., Phillips & Lonigan, 2009). Children who are reported by their parents to engage in such activities infrequently are on average less successful in learning to read than children who are reported to engage in them often (e.g., Burgess, Hecht, & Lonigan, 2002 Christian, Morrison, & Bryant, 1998). These activities may include being read to by their parents, learning to spell their names, and playing with magnets in the shapes of letters. Part of the answer may lie in the literacy-related activities that children participate in at home, before formal reading instruction begins. Consequently, researchers, educators, and policy makers are interested in finding out why some children learn to read more easily than others. Learning to read is crucial for success in school and life.
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